


What's up, it's Alexei!

by rhysiana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: ESL tutoring, Gen, The origin of Falconer TV, This is not a kissing story, language learning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 16:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11108274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: Alexei Mashkov is ready and eager to play hockey for the Providence Falconers. He's just a little less ready to have to live full-time in an English-speaking country. Never fear; Georgia promptly hires him an English tutor.





	What's up, it's Alexei!

**Author's Note:**

> When Ngozi posted [this picture](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/160740956562) of young post-draft Tater “trying his darnedest to answer press questions in English,” I thought, “You know, I could make a play, er, fic out of that.” Which is what led to the following 2700+ words about Tater and his ESL tutor.
> 
> Many, many thanks to @ktheunready for being my Russian authenticity consultant and beta!

Georgia Martin stood at the back of the media scrum and watched Alexei Mashkov stumble his way through his post-draft interview, saw the way his fingers kneaded the brim of the brand-new Falconers’ cap he’d been handed for the initial official photos, saw the way his eyes widened and stayed intently glued to whoever was asking him a question, like he was afraid he’d miss some key bit of meaning if he blinked.

She pulled out her phone and made a call.

***

«No, Mama, I promise, my room is very nice. The family is very nice. Everything is very…»

«Let me guess, nice? »

Alexei sighed. «Yes.»

«You know I don’t doubt you, right, Alyosha? I’m not worried you can’t do this. You will be _fine_. But I know this is your first time to live in another country, with none of the boys from your teams here. It can be… hard, sometimes. I know.»

«Yeah, Mama, I know. You told me.»

«Are you telling me you’ve heard the stories of my youth too many times?» she asked in mock outrage.

«No, no!» he laughed. «Of course not.»

«Good. I should think not.» He could picture her face exactly, and it made him smile. «I’m glad your host family seems nice, Alyosha. I’m sure you will have many friends in no time.»

He flopped back on the bed again and stared at the ceiling. «I hope so.»

«We’ll talk again soon. Love you, son.»

«Love you, too.»

He hung up and let his phone rest on his chest. He’d been to America before. He’d thought he’d known what it would be like, that it wouldn’t be so bad. Different, yes, but there would be so many interesting new things to see, and new teammates, and he certainly knew how to play hockey. What he had failed to take into account, apparently, was how _exhausting_ it was to try to function in English all day. For a US hockey team, the Falconers’ roster was shockingly low on Russian players, so his host family was one of the French Canadian ones. To their credit, they did speak _some_ Russian, but it was hardly enough to have a real conversation. Alexei felt like he’d been practically mute all day.

There was a knock at his door. With a muffled groan, he forced himself back up to answer it. It was Marty, now looking slightly concerned.

“You okay, Mashkov?”

“Oh, yes, just tired. Was talking to my mama.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt…”

“No, no, we hang up already.”

“Ah, good, good. There’s, uh, there’s actually someone here for you?” He gestured down the hall toward the living room.

“For me?” Alexei asked in surprise.

“Did Georgia not tell you?”

Frantically, Alexei searched his mind for something she might have said about someone coming to see him. A reporter? A coach? A trainer? She wouldn’t send any of them to Marty’s house. What had he missed? Overwhelmed, he shook his head.

Shrugging, Marty led the way down the hall.

Alexei relaxed slightly when he saw the small brown-haired woman sitting on the couch chatting with Marty’s wife, Gabby. She was dressed casually and her hair was up in a ponytail, no recording equipment in sight, so he didn’t think she was a reporter. “Um, hello? I am Alexei?” he ventured.

She stood and held out her hand with a smile. “Hi! My name’s Christine. Georgia sent me to help with your English.”

All Alexei could do was blink.

She began to look concerned.

 _Say something_ , he yelled at himself. _She’s going to think you don’t speak any English at all!_

“I don’t… I am sorry, I don’t remember her say this.” He shrugged helplessly, embarrassed and apologetic. His cheeks felt very hot.

It was her turn to blink. She looked with dismay from him to Marty and his wife. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I thought she had told you, but maybe she thought I had…” She turned and scrabbled at her bag, coming up with a notebook and a pen, which she promptly stuck distractedly into her hair. “I have it on my schedule, I know I do, but I don’t remember a note to call ahead…” Now she was turning red, too, and looking increasingly flustered.

“No, is okay! I probably just not understand,” Alexei hastened to assure her.

Marty just looked relieved that the mystery appeared to be solved. “Would you like to use the kitchen table?” Gabby asked.

“Oh, sure, that would be great,” Christine replied. “This isn’t really a formal class today, so there’s no books or anything, so wherever we’ll be out of your way is fine.”

“It’s no problem at all,” Gabby said, and led the way. Once she gave them water and made sure they didn’t need anything else, she left.

Alexei turned his glass around on the table a few times nervously.

Christine opened her notebook to a clean page and frowned down at the table when her pen wasn’t there, too. He smiled when she started patting her pockets and her bag.

“Is here.” He gestured at his own head to illustrate, and her hand flew up to her hair.

“Oh, thank you! I’m always doing that.” She put the pen down firmly in the middle of the open notebook and glared at it before looking up at him again. “Now, let’s start over. I’m Christine, and I will be your English tutor. Uh, if you want me to be. Georgia called and asked me to do it, anyway.”

Alexei tilted his head a little and considered. She seemed nice. “No, I think is good idea. English is…” He thought about his day. “Make me very tired.” He hoped she wouldn’t be insulted.

She just nodded. “Totally normal. It’s taking a lot of energy for you to try to understand everything around you, and then have to think of how to respond. You’re working hard! You should be tired.”

He frowned. “But I not do anything today. We have only tiny practice. Nothing.”

She looked at him very seriously. “Living in another language is very hard work. You have to think so much, all the time, no breaks. You will be tired. For weeks, probably. And it’s normal, I promise. It happens to everyone.”

Huh. He nodded to show he’d understood. He had no other response.

“If I was doing this for my regular tutoring agency, I’d have to give you an English test now…”

“Test?”

“No, it’s okay, no test. I’m teaching you as a favor to Georgia, just me and you. No boss for me to show the test to. But I need to know your English level so I can plan our classes, okay?”

“Yes.”

“So, an easy way! Tell me about something you like. What do you like to do for fun in Russia? Not hockey, just for fun.”

He thought for a second, a little confused. “Not… hockey? But… is for job, to improve my English? I need talk about hockey.”

She folded her hands across her notebook. “We can talk about hockey if you want to. I don’t mind. But that’s really not why Georgia hired me. I’m here to help _you_. And right now, I think you need more help just being comfortable with English. With living in the US. We can practice interviews, sure. We probably will do that sometimes. But the interviews will be easier when everything is easier. So today I just want you to tell me about something fun.”

And since that made sense, and he _was_ just a 19-year-old guy when he wasn’t playing hockey, he pulled out his phone and spent an hour showing her memes on VKontakte. Some of them were hard to explain in English, but she never looked impatient or frustrated with him, so he tried, and she laughed, so he must have made the jokes make sense at least a little bit.

He felt like it had been days since he made anyone laugh. It wasn’t natural.

Eventually, though, she looked at her watch, made some notes, and then said, “Thank you, Alexei, I think this was very good. I’ll talk to Georgia to see how often we can have a class. Right now, can I give you some homework?”

He grimaced.

“Fun homework, I promise!”

“Okay, what?”

“Please give yourself a break every night before you go to bed. Watch a Russian show or movie. Read a Russian book. Just relax. I know you probably had English teachers tell you this was a bad idea, but now that you are here? You are surrounded by English all the time. You’re learning all the time. Your brain can get too full. Sometimes you have to take a break.”

“Okay…” He knew he still sounded doubtful.

“And the next time I see you, you will tell me about your show or your book. You can try writing about it in English if you want to practice before our class. But I know you’re already trying hard.”

“I… okay. Thank you.”

“See you soon!”

***

Alexei was not good at relaxing, it turned out. He did have lots of Russian TV to watch at night before bed; he had to keep up with _Dom-2_ anyway, so he could discuss it with his mother, but he didn’t know if that would be interesting for Christine, so he looked through his books and thought maybe he could tell her about _Azazel’_. It was a mystery; everybody liked mysteries, right?

The next time Marty knocked on his door to tell him dinner was ready, he was sitting at the small desk in the room, the book, a notebook, and a large dictionary open in front of him.

“What are you doing?” Marty asked curiously.

“I translate this book.”

Marty laughed and put a hand on his shoulder. “Buddy, I’m pretty sure I heard Christine tell you to take a break.”

“She say I can practice!”

“I know, but I really don’t think she meant for you to translate a whole book. Why don’t you just try summarizing it?”

“Summarize?”

“Just, um, just try to tell the story in a few sentences. Like a paragraph. Short version.”

It did sound like a more reasonable suggestion. Alexei sighed and closed the dictionary.

***

Christine was back just two days later. “Georgia says we can have lots of classes until camp starts.”

“Good. I’m boring. And don’t like talk like child.”

“Bored. And yeah, that’s always frustrating.”

“Bored?”

“Yeah, you,” she pointed, “are bored. The news,” she pointed to the TV, “is boring. If something is boring, it makes you feel bored. _You_ are actually very interesting! Opposite of boring.”

Alexei grinned. “Thank you.”

She looked at him closely. “Uh-huh. You understand a lot more than you let on.”

He shrugged and tried to look very innocent. “Maybe.”

“So Marty tells me you were going to translate a whole book.”

Alexei shot a glare in the direction of the other room. “He rat me?”

“Hah! ‘Rat on me,’ very good. Where did you learn that?”

He shrugged again. “In movie.”

“Good, good. I think he told me because he was impressed. But tell me, do you want to translate the book? If you think it will be fun, I won’t say it’s a bad idea.”

“Not really. One page, already very hard.”

“Yeah, translation is really hard. Kind of harder than just reading in English, because you have to keep switching back and forth.”

“Oh.”

She reached over and patted his hand. “No, it was a good idea! Maybe you can do it later.” She drummed her fingers on the table while looking at him for a few seconds. “Okay, look. I think you’re worried I’m going to be too easy on you.”

He shifted in his seat a little, because that was what he had been thinking. He needed to get better, not play games and relax.

“Remember how I said you were going to get tired all the time just living in English?”

“Yes.”

“And I told you your brain can get to full?”

“Yes.”

“Those are kind of simple ways to talk about it, but it’s true. I went to graduate school to learn about this, and this is what we know about how people learn another language, especially in an immersion environment.” She looked at him to check he understood that term. “Surrounded all the time,” she clarified just in case.

He nodded.

“People learn in bursts. Right now, because you just got here, you are learning so much every day.” She gestured with her hand zooming into the air like an airplane taking off. “You don’t even know how much you’re learning right now, there’s so much. And that’s what makes you tired. Your brain is trying to take it all in, organize it, put it somewhere you can find it again, and give you words when you need them to talk. And it’s not very organized right now, which is why it can take a long time to find the words you need.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed. “I hate this.”

“Yeah, it’s really frustrating. But at some point, you’ll hit a plateau,” and here her hand made a flat line, “and then it won’t feel like you’re learning anything new, but it will just mean that your brain can’t hold anything new and needs to take some more time to organize. Then words will come faster, things will get more comfortable. And then you’ll take off again,” and her hand went back up. “Again and again. It will happen many times.”

“Okay…”

“But one thing that will help a lot is if you can stay happy. Relaxed. Because if you get very frustrated or upset or nervous, it makes, like, a wall inside your head. And new words and grammar and things can’t get over the wall. Being relaxed makes the wall very low. Being frustrated makes the wall very high. So this is why I told you to take a break if you need one. You will be living here for a long time. There is no hurry. If you make yourself feel like you must learn all the English as fast as possible right this second, you’ll just make your wall too high. Give your brain a break and let the wall go back down.”

“Is like… try shoot a puck too many times when angry. Just get worse, not better.”

“I’ll take your word for it, but yeah, that sounds right.” She folded her hands in front of her again and looked him straight in the eye. “So now do you believe I’m going to give you enough work?”

“Okay, I believe.”

“Good! Because I looked you up online.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “In Russian?”

“I got a friend to show me how to search on VKontakte and Yandex. And you, sir,” she pointed sternly, “have been holding back on me.”

He held up his hands. “What I do?”

“You make videos! And you talk a lot. Do you know Georgia told me you were a quiet kid? I have no idea what you were saying in those videos, but you were talking all the time. And everyone was laughing.”

He waved a hand. “Very stupid videos. Show team. The,” he paused to search for the phrase, “behind the scenes.”

“But you liked doing them a lot, right?”

Well, he could hardly deny that. “Yes.”

She slapped her hands on the table. “Perfect! Then that will be our project. We’re going to get you to the point you can make videos like that for your new team.”

“We are?”

“Yes. And to start, you are going to make a short video every day about something, anything, just to practice doing it in English. Two minutes, maybe. Just on your computer, like a video journal. You can show them to me, or not, your choice. The point is to practice your spoken English with no pressure, and to have a goal that you want to do.”

Alexei felt himself start to smile. He could do this. He could learn to be himself in English, too. “Yeah, okay.”

“Great!”

***

“Hi, it’s Alexei! Today I tell you about this book…”

***

“Hi, it’s Alexei! Today I watch _Dom-2_ and it’s very funny story…”

***

“Hi, it’s Alexei! Today I see a very funny picture on the internet…”

***

“Hi, it’s Alexei! Today my hockey camp start…”

***

“Hi, it’s Alexei! Today I get a very funny new name…

***

“Hi, it’s Alexei! I talk to Georgia today about my video…”

***

“Hi, Falconers TV! What’s up, it’s Alexei!”


End file.
